Bio Picks / Take 3

More memorable performances by actors 
playing people who actually lived:

                  Sean Penn as Harvey Milk 
                      in "Milk"

                  Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking 
                      in "The Theory of Everything"

                  Donald Sutherland as Paul Gauguin 
                      in "Wolf At the Door"

                  Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway 
                      in "Midnight In Paris"

                  Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck 
                      in "Shadow of the Vampire"

                  Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf 
                      in "La Vie en Rose"

                  Jeff Daniels as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain 
                      in "Gettysburg"

                  Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page 
                      in "The Notorious Bettie Page"

                  James Franco as Allen Ginsberg 
                      in "Howl"

                  David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow 
                      in "Good Night, and Good Luck"

A Ghost Story (2017)

A GHOST STORY  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: David Lowery
    Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, McColm Cephas Jr.,
    Kenneisha Thompson, Liz Cardenas Franke
Who would've thought the most inventive ghost story in ages would be the most low-tech, a movie with a ghost played by an actor wearing a sheet over his head? I couldn't tell you why that works. It shouldn't, but it does. Check it out sometime. You'll see.

Five Star Final (1931)

FIVE STAR FINAL  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Mervyn LeRoy
    Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H.B. Warner,
    Anthony Bushnell, Frances Starr, Boris Karloff,
    Aline McMahon, Ona Munson, Oscar Apfel
Robinson plays the tough-talking editor of a big-city scandal sheet whose publisher doesn't care what they print or whose lives get ruined, as long as circulation keeps going up. A hard-hitting newspaper drama and a scathing indictment of the tabloid press. Karloff has a supporting role as an unscrupulous reporter. Released the same year Karloff made "Frankenstein" and a year after Robinson's breakout performance in "Little Caesar".

Phantom Thread (2017)

PHANTOM THREAD  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Paul Thomas Anderson
    Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville
A waitress becomes the model, muse and mistress of the world's fussiest man, a fashion designer played with fastidious precision by Daniel Day-Lewis. It's a comedy of manners (I think), and there are a few amusing moments, but not enough of them. Like Day-Lewis's performance, it's a movie that feels calibrated to within an inch of its life, and while it's easy to admire the craftsmanship involved, I found myself in the last 20 or 30 minutes picking out spots where I thought it could end, and wishing it would. I also found myself thinking that Day-Lewis in this film looks like a guy who could be Arnold Schwarzenegger's skinny kid brother. Except that Arnold would be looser and funnier. And he'd break a few heads.

The Great Silence (1968)

THE GREAT SILENCE  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sergio Corbucci
    Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Frank Wolff,
    Vonetta McGee, Luigi Pastilli, Mario Brega
Most spaghetti westerns don't look like this: all cold and snowbound, with characters wrapped head to foot in long fur coats. The story takes place in the winter in Utah, which looks a lot different from the usual spaghetti West. (It was shot in the Dolomite Alps.) There's a mysterious stranger who never speaks and has a peculiar habit of shooting the thumbs off people he really doesn't like. He's played by French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, who's not the first name that comes to mind when your thinking of a spaghetti western. Then there's a bounty hunter who's paid to bring his suspects in dead or alive, so he brings them in dead because it's easier. He's played by Klaus Kinski, who looks like he has a screw loose somewhere, and apparently did. There's a ragged gang of bandits living up in the mountains, and a sheriff who's as talkative as the stranger is silent, and a town whose only inhabitants appear to be whores and more bounty hunters, plus one corrupt public official who acts as the community's banker, mayor and judge. Most of these people will catch a bullet eventually, but not necessarily the people you think. Tarantino must've watched this a few times while he was dreaming up "The Hateful Eight". The ending's subversive, even by spaghetti western standards. See for yourself.

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Luca Guadagnino
    Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Amira Cassar,
    Michael Stuhlbarg, Esther Garrel, Victoire du Bois
A gay romantic fantasy about a 17-year-old named Elio who finds himself becoming attracted to and then involved with a man who's a few years older. It takes place in the summer in northern Italy, so the backdrop is beautiful, and Hammer and Chalamet make an attractive pair of lovers, and I guess if this is your idea of a dream romance, go for it. I couldn't quite buy it, though. The characters, even when they're confused and hurt, are invariably eloquent and articulate, in a way that wouldn't occur in real life, but can in a carefully scripted movie. And while you might wish every gay kid had such accommodating parents, you wonder why Elio's folks aren't a little more concerned about what's clearly going on between their underaged son and this smooth-talking older guy. (He might not be that much older, but it's enough to make a difference.) And there's this heart-to-heart talk between Elio and his dad toward the end, where the father reveals something that's no secret at all if you've been watching the movie. I also kept wondering how the dynamic might change if you were to monkey with the genders involved. Like, what if this arrogant but dashing guy was getting it on with your 17-year-old daughter instead of your son? Or what if the 17-year-old kid was a boy, but the older character was a woman? Or what if they were both women? The vibe would be different. Would anything else? Huh. I don't know.

Race With the Devil (1975)

RACE WITH THE DEVIL  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jack Starrett
    Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit,
    Lara Parker, R.G. Armstrong, Clay Tanner
Fonda and Oates play a couple of middle-class guys who take off on a road trip with their wives in a shiny, new motor home. The first night out, they're parked in the middle of nowhere getting pleasantly drunk, when they witness what appears to be a ritual murder. After that, they're on the run across a backroads landscape where everybody they meet, including the cops, could be out to kill them, and every sedan, school bus and pickup truck appears to be part of a plot to drive them off the road. A relentlessly creepy, low-budget study in paranoia, and nobody could play paranoia like Warren Oates. "Duel" meets "Rosemary's Baby" in this. Good car-wreck stunt work.

Peter Fonda

(1940-2019)